Not the knowing. Julian could manage what he knew. It was the shape of the unknown, the outline of something he could not yet fully see, could only sense at its edges, something that had been planned carefully enough that it had looked, to every camera and every guard, like nothing at all.
"Sir." The voice came back, slightly breathless. "I'm pulling the footage now. The nursery window for that period." Another pause, longer, the kind that meant something was being seen for the first time. "Sir, there.." A stop.
"What?" Julian said. "There's a gap." Julian went very still.
"In the footage. Fourteen minutes. The timestamp runs, but the image is static. Same frame repeating." The voice had changed register entirely now. "Sir, someone looped the feed."
The car park below continued its ordinary business.
People walking. People carrying flowers. Someone loading a pram into a car with the cheerful exhaustion of a new parent.
Julian watched none of it.
